What Is Webmaster Tool and Why Is It Essential For SEO?

Google Webmaster Tools, renamed as Google Search Console from 2015, is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It is mainly used by webmasters to check indexing status and optimize the visibility of their websites. To be more specific, Webmaster Tools mainly helps to the webmaster, to view, the way their site is performing in Google’s Search results troubleshoot potential problems and build in Google-friendly sites. Webmaster Tool is for anybody with a website – bloggers, online stores big and small, government and education sites.

Further, it makes the site competent for ranking in Google. Most search experts depend on Google Webmaster Tool (GWT) to analyze the technical aspects of a website.These experts mainly lay stress on data like crawl stats, page errors and rich snippets.

6 Effective but easy ways to use Webmaster Tools to improve the on-page SEO

1.HTML Improvements: The Search Appearances enlists the HTML Improvements. This is a short report stating about any issues dealing with site’s meta descriptions and title tags, coupled with the traces of any content that is not alterable.

In the SEO world, it is important to have unique meta descriptions and optimized title tags. This report allows the webmaster to easily identify title tag/meta description issues and prioritize the user’s efforts.

2. Content Keywords: Content Keywords are available under Google Index. This is an interesting tool as it helps the webmaster to determine the views held by Google about the site and not he/she perceive their site to be.

It shows the keywords which are used on the site, coupled with keyword variations and significance. These data help to decide quickly, whether more content is needed centering around certain specific keywords, themes, and topics. It also shows the pages the keywords would appear on.

3. Structured Data: Structured Data is perhaps a very helpful way to explain the content of the website to the Search Engines, which in turn, in some cases can be an aid to the rankings and traffic. If the site contains structured data, then this tool states of a feature that Google would be able to detect that on the site, along with the URLs containing each type. This report can be further found under Search Appearance > Structured Data.

4. Data Markup Helper: Under other sources, this helper allows the webmaster to tag the data fields for events, products and much more on their site. This is easy to use point-and-click tool, and the good part about this is that HTML changes are not required. The mouse itself highlights and tags each key piece of data on the appropriate page of the website.

5. Sitemaps: The Sitemaps section allows the webmaster to view all the sitemaps that have been added or been found by Google, couple with basic statistics such as the last date it was processed and the number of pages submitted and indexed. These stats can be further viewed by content-type, meaning Web, video, images, and news.

Another striking feature is the sitemap test option. After the webmaster provides the URL of a sitemap and has been scanned by Google, any errors that need to be fixed can be easily detected and fixed.

6. Removing URLs: Remove URLs feature in the Google Index, helps to remove a URL from Google’s Index.Undoubtedly, this is a very helpful tool. But should be used only when there is a permanent removal of a URL.

For instance, if the user has accidentally displayed certain confidential information such as credit card number and is essential to get this page removed, the user can request a haste removal of the URL. This tool is found under the ‘Google Index’ in the left-hand corner of the navigation.

Webmaster Tool helps to prioritize SEO improvement and saves time from the process of analysis. Also, apart from these above 6, there are various ways in which Google Webmaster Tools would help in generating the webmasters an effective on-page SEO program.